The cost, complexity, and time required to implement on-premise information management services often far exceeds their business value. Valuable resources may be consumed in tasks such as acquiring and racking hardware, installing software, configuring management and backup services, and testing the new environment. When adopting new information management services, it is necessary for users to ensure that the problem being solved is large enough to rationalize these expenses.
These challenges to the user may also be problematic for a supplier. Prospective customers may be hesitant to adopt new systems due to limited resources and exorbitant costs. This may decrease a supplier's income and directly impact their profits. Further, a supplier may be forced to continue offering services, such as technical support, for outdated systems. These services may divert valuable assets from more profitable ventures.
Technical support may present a further issue to the supplier because user environments may not be unique. Users may build these environments using a variety of different hardware and software options. Even when best practices documents are provided there is no way to ensure that users are complying with best practices. As a result, technical issues which never should have arisen may need to be addressed. Such situations may result in significant losses to both the user and the supplier.
Despite these obvious limitations to on-premise resource management solutions, off-premise solutions may not be practical for, or available to, all users. For example, a large corporation may be reluctant to use an off-premise solution because of security concerns. They may feel that a local environment can be better protected than a remote one. There may also be industry standards or regulatory requirements which demand the end user maintain certain levels of control.
There is a need, therefore, for an improved method or system for implementing, distributing, and managing information management systems.